Freedom From a Dangerous Drug
FREEDOM FROM A DANGEROUS DRUG
In London, a seemingly hopeless alcoholic was placed under the care of a psychiatrist, but found little help. A Billy Graham evangelistic crusade was being held in that city and this hurting man was invited to attend. There he heard of God’s love for him and responded to the invitation to receive Christ as his Savior.
When this new convert was about to fall asleep that night, he reached for his bottle to take his customary last drink of the day but found himself unable to continue his old habit. Getting out of bed, he emptied the bottle of liquor down the sink drain. When he awakened in the morning he reached by force of habit for his usual bracer.
It was not there. Rather than responding with disappointment or alarm, he found himself breathing a sigh of relief. He knew in that moment he’d been set free.
Grateful for what he knew was a genuinely fresh start, this newly emancipated addict phoned his psychiatrist and told him what had taken place the night before. “I am a new man,” he said.
“Sounds fine,” the psychiatrist relied. “Maybe I can find help where you found it.” This counselor in need of counseling began attending the evangelistic meetings and was also moved by the message of God’s love. Like the patient he had lost, he opened his heart and found true peace in Christ.
Since the middle of the last century, America has spearheaded an international war on drug addiction…with few victories to rejoice over. Our current “state of emergency,” the “opiate epidemic” of addiction and death is but the latest in a long list of such horrors.
Yet we must not forget that alcohol use remains the world’s most serious drug problem by far. According to the Lancet medical journal, as reported in the Guardian, “alcohol use in 2016 led to 2.8 million deaths and was the leading risk factor for premature mortality and disability in the 15 to 49 age group, accounting for 20% of deaths worldwide.”
But there will be no international coalition battling the world’s favorite dangerous drug. It is legal; it is loved; it is lauded by the culture. If progress is to be made on this front, faithful individuals in recovery from addictions and others who are honest and caring enough will have to fight in the trenches where alcohol enslaves and destroys.
The list is long of those who have been set free from alcohol by faith. Among them is Jack Odell, a former director of Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission. Describing the great change this freedom through faith can make, he wrote: “If there’s music in you, you’ll sing because you finally have something to sing about. If there’s a book in you, you’ll write because you finally have something to write about."
“If your gift is for hard work, you’ll work as never before: and happily so, because your energies are released and you have an indwelling Reinforcer. If your gift is for laughter, you’ll stop laughing at cruel things. Then your laugh will become warm and contagious, and other people will want to join you…"
“You’ll be alive and creative and fulfilled for the first time.” Odell said it well because he wrote from experience. The vacuum in his life that had chained him to alcohol had been filled by faith and he had been set free.
Roger Campbell was an author, a broadcaster and columnist who was a pastor for 22 years. A new book containing over one hundred of his best columns, “Everywhere You Go There’s a Zacchaeus Up a Tree,” is now available at your local or online bookseller. Contact us at rcministry@ameritech.net
